The "Three Es" of Delivering SEO to Small&nbspBusiness

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

If you've ever been in the business of delivering SEO to small businesses (or, indeed, any business), this will be a familiar story to you.

You're working away for your client. Everything is going well – rankings and traffic are improving as fast as you would expect, you're getting some juicy links in and your on-site work is looking shiny. You don't hear much from the client, but that's okay – more time for you to concentrate on the work at hand. Your monthly reports are keeping them informed.

Then, out of the blue, you get that phone call. They're not happy. They thought they'd be on page one by now. They don't get where all this money is going. The Boss, who you didn't even know existed, doesn't understand what this “SEO thing” is all about. Maybe you can placate them, but wouldn't it be better to avoid this fate in the first place?

That's where the “Three Es” come in.

Engagement
Regular reports are fine, but they're not a substitute for proper engagement with your client. You need to build a rapport through regular two way communication, with as much face time as possible. This is especially important as quality SEO, especially in the small business arena, relies as much on deliverables from the client as it does from you. They'll be much more forthcoming in meeting your requests when they feel that they know you well.

Get as much face and phone time as possible.

Don't hesitate to fire off quick, informal emails with questions or comments. Share your excitement about their campaign.

Speak with them in their language, not yours. Really listen to them.

Make sure to keep them front of mind, so you’re front of mind for them.

Education
The more your client understands the SEO process, the better your relationship and the campaign will go. But it doesn't stop there. You need to learn about them as well. Understanding your client's business and industry will highlight new opportunities for link building and content you may otherwise have missed. It will also make them feel better about you.

Make it clear what you're doing and why (again, talk to them in their language).

Ask them questions.

Read forums and blogs relevant to their industry.

Make sure you read their own site thoroughly.

Expectation
The number one area where relationships go sour is incorrect expectations, and SEO is a real minefield in this respect. But before you start telling them what the relevant metrics and time-scales are, make sure you listen to them and understand what their current mindset is.

Understand why they want to pursue SEO as a strategy and what they're expecting from it.

Educate them about the different metrics available, which ones you use and why. A question I often get is, "Why don't you just use PageRank?"

Make sure their expectations are realistic.

Most importantly, make sure those expectations are real for them. Ask them to describe in their own words what the success of the campaign will mean for them. Keep going until that picture is realistic for you both.

Summary
There you have it: The Three Es – engagement, education and expectation. It's simple stuff, all about real communication from both parties. And yes, it might seem like a drag having to spend time on the phone or in meetings when you could be working on deliverables, but you won't regret it. The client will be happier and ultimately you'll deliver better results.

That's one of the hardest parts of providing a service like SEO, you have to turn away potential clients because you could never meet their expectations.

Because of this, I feel the last bullet point under expectations is of critial importance. If a small bookstore that just got online wants SEO because they think it can get them listed above Amazon, you'd probably be better off elsewhere.

Hear dat! Run for the hills. Even site owners and designers who believe SEO is an exact science can't fix some sick sites.

One past client asked me to build and optimize his one-product site. I explained that his bounce rate would be through the roof because he only sold one product targting a VERY a narrow demographic.

Pushed on any way. 12 months later the site doesn't pull or convert to his expectations and I now receive calls and emails asking for revisions.

Me: "I told you it wouldn't work. Now you want free revisions?"

Client: "Yeah, but I borrowed money from friends to pay you."

Relevance factor: 0. I've determined that it's not my job to save clients from themselves. I give my best opinion, educate, elucidate and split once the gig is done and check clears.

May be time to hang a NO REFUNDS sign on my front lawn in glowing neon. You're right, that small bookstore owner is going to blame you when Bezos eats his lunch. And the smaller the budget, the higher the expectations.

I know what you mean. Having done SEO for a while, and web design for a long time before that, I think I can spot the time wasters pretty easily. It's the turning them down that's the hard part though!

I think that last point under expectations is very important as well. It's about making sure that the expectations aren't just realistic, but that the client really understands them properly as well, at a deep intuitive level.

Yeah, problem is, prospective clients don't like to be told their babies are ugly, even when I have to avert my eyes.

You nailed it. I always feel sorry for the potential site owner working with a "cookie jar" budget. I end up in a digital quagmire every time, i.e. my client who asks for revisions 6 months after launch and 8 months after I told him his business model wouldn't work.

Absolutely, and I'm always careful to point out (in writing) that there are no guarantees.

I'll often also suggest going with AdWords instead of SEO if I think the client's budget is too low or if their expectations will prove hard to manage. At least with AdWords you get a fairly quick ROI, if it's going to work at all.

Depends... if the website is awfully designed, PPC can be a nightmare as well as the quality score of Adwords depends by factors which finally are supposing an SEO optimization of the site... if the quality score is too low happens that:

or the ad doesn't show at all

or the ad show but for a higher price than it should be if the quality score was better

This is true -- no marketing is going to fix a bad site. At least if you're driving traffic with PPC, though, you can demonstrate that with hard numbers, and get A/B testing in there to try to improve things.

In the comment above, I was more thinking about PPC as an alternative to SEO where the real problem is expectations management, not poor site design.

As you state at the beginning of your post, I lived this situation on my skin.

I would suggest a 4th ES... Empathy.

To create an empathetic relation with your client is something needed in order to pass through the inevitable 'down' moments of client-provider relationship.

Infact, even if you were able to Educate him, to Engage him into the 'SEO game' and to create the right Expectations, is normal that he will have moments when he will see all this-search-engine-stuff almost black.

In those moments you have to act like the best football trainers (up to you to choose a model): talk to his emotions and not just give him cold statistics. Because in those moments he's not reacting with is human brain (the rational), but with his mammal brain (the emotional).

So, I suggest to dedicate some of our time reading about psicology. It doesn't hurt, and can give us the right key to solve some of the problems we could have with our loved/hated clients.

One of the most difficult things to do is trying to convince a client that you're doing something!!!

Unfortunately, SEO is the type of work that involves a lot of 'behind the scenes' tasks that won't produce results for x amount of time but is effective.

I completely agree that communication is key to keep the clients happy, but sometimes when they're unhappy and think that they're flushing money into something that is making no significant return in the short term it's difficult to turn their mindset around. :-(

Absolutely, I've had this exact experience. This is why I think it's important to educate them as much as possible as to what is happening behind the scenes -- plus that it will often take a long time to come to fruition!

Education is always a good thing. Whenever I find an article that is easy-to-digest and simple I tend to send it off to the client who I am working for.

I'm currently trying to come up with an SEO lexicon to post in the YOUmoz section of this site actually, so if you'd like to share some of your experiences with me it would be great. Perhaps a few phrases/terms that often crop up and you think would be good to explain here.

Whenever I find an article that is easy-to-digest and simple I tend to send it off to the client who I am working for.

Great idea!

I'll have a think about examples for your lexicon. I did recently have a client who absolutely could not get the importance of incoming links (!), no matter how many times I explained it. He couldn't even remember what they were called from week to week!

I usually use a very graphic metaphore... incoming links are like recomendations in real life. If you [aka: the client] have done a good job for Mr. Brown, maybe Mr. Brown will recomend your services to Mr. White and Mr. Orange, who will contact you... be happy and recomend you too to Mr. Blue and Mr. Black... and if it happens that Mr. Black is a really important person in the community, and he's happy with your job, his recomendation will be have even a bigger effect.

Usually it works.

The philosophy behind this example: try to be creative explaining you job with a language your client can really understand... do it using his words, not yours.

Awesome stuff, really like this post. Dealing with small business owners can be quite a challenge (most of the time more so than larger clients). They tend to take much more time out of your life than you originally signed up for.

Excuse me for saying this but i might add an extra "E" into this. "Evaluation", but more precisely constant evaluation. Making sure that you analyse and evaluate any work being done or to be done can help you as much as it will clarify everything for the client. Moulded in with Expectation the evaluation of work and the site itself allows you to stay on top and ahead of any potential problems arising in the site or with the client. I have always found that creating n evaluation template for work helps me to keep the client on track with what was agreed.

That's another good one. Great stuff! I guess it boils down to helping the client understand what you're actually doing (and where their money is going), as well as being useful for yourself. Regular reports can help here, although I often feel as though they're a bit of a barrier to communication sometimes.

Something I've realised when it comes to Small Businesses is if you give them an inch they will take a mile! Literally wanting you to hold their hands for their website and every slight update, sometimes this is not a bad think though. However if you have a number of clients it might get a bit tricky. I guess that's where the point on "Expectations" should be stressed. Not just the results they expect from SEO but what they expect from YOU as their SEO consultant.

That's a really good point, regarind what they should expect from you as well as from SEO itself. It's some that I definitely find hard to define with clients. Even if I find it easy to tell them that SEO is a long, hard slog, I find it hard to tell them what I won't be doing for them!

Thankfully most of our clients see it as "all the lines on the little chart thingys are going up so that's okay". But we do have a few that grow quite impatient even after explaining the situation. It's like they forget each week that goes by and we have to explain it again.

Spot on! It's really important when dealing with smaller businesses that you undertake all 3 of these.

Managing a clients expectations are top of the list but the other 2 are close behind. Manage their expectations from the outset, and you won't hear, "Shouldn't we have millions of visitors by now?" two weeks into your campaign.

Educating them is also important, as they have probably been visiting dozens of SEO forums and read loads of BS on SEO and are feeling totally confused.com

Expectation management is the most critical element for me, education and engagement are an essential part of this process.

The smaller the client the more sensitive they are to the spend. In some cases its like life and death. The smaller they are the more emotionally attached they are to the cash.

We learnt the hard way and we now place a lot of emphasis on explaining the journey and mapping out what we see as key milestones. Then linking these with the clients business assumptions around CTR and conversions revenues and margin.

So we help the client through the business planning process. We make them understand, at least the maths and the business assumptions.

1st place is a destination are there are no direct flights.It simply takes time. SEO is a long-term investment.

We use all of this as part of our sales qualificaction process, now we wont close until they get it otherwise we end up losing cash.

As far as delivery is concerned we provide some rough predictions around keywords and rankings. By predicting the first movers we help build confidence and this gets the client engaged and animated.

This trick helps to avoid buyers remorse which tends to set in at the end of month #2/#3, if the client is not managed correctly.

We still dont get it right all the time, but on the upside when it does go right these clients can be exceedingly loyal.